After 105 laps of swapping places, one final blow decided whether Marcos Ambrose or Jimmie Johnson would come out on top of a race-long scrap for victory at Infineon Raceway.

After 105 laps of swapping places, one final blow decided whether Marcos Ambrose or Jimmie Johnson would come out on top of a race-long scrap for victory at Infineon Raceway.

Johnson was struggling with tyre wear, so Ambrose looked to have the upper hand heading to the final restart with only 5 laps to go. However, one crucial mistake decided whether the #47 or #48 would be heading to Victory Lane.

Ambrose was in fuel saving mode, and shut off his engine to coast along the start/finish straight. However, once he reached the foot of the hill he went to start his engine, only to hear the starter motor tick over endlessly. His Toyota Camry had ground to a halt halfway up the Turn 2 hill. Johnson and co. cruised by, and after Ambrose returned to the front of the pack after his embarrassing error, NASCAR told him to go back to 7th place for the last restart.

Robby Gordon meanwhile put in a good run to take 2nd place, fending off Kevin Harvick in the closing stages of the race.

There wasn’t much action in the first half of the race – until a pile-up at a restart on Lap 67 brought out the red flags. As Boris Said spun his tyres, it held up the whole of the inside lane, causing a cascade effect. The cars near the back of the field bunched up very quickly, and eventually there wasn’t any room left for cars to fit. 5 cars took the brunt of the impact (Hornish, Papis, Menard, Smith and Martin Truex) and there was debris scattered across the start finish straight. It took some time for Truex’s stricken Toyota to be cleared up, hence the brief race stoppage.

Once the race resumed, Johnson and Ambrose’s stops were fast approaching. The former made his pitstop on Lap 79, and Ambrose a lap later. Johnson looked much faster, but after being held up in traffic the Aussie was able to dive out of pit road just ahead of him and retain the lead.

Mattias Ekstrom was having a clean run, and with a good strategy on his side, he had been able to run in the Top 10 for most of the race despite qualifying outside of the Top 30. That run only lasted until Lap 92 however, when Brad Keselowski needlessly spun him out at the exit of Turn 7. David Gilliland helped Ekstrom get some payback however, after he spun Keselowski out on the entry to the same corner he got Ekstrom, which caused the race deciding caution period.

Johnson was just pleased he avoided the carnage that unfolded in the second half of the race, and was able to keep a clean nose to the finish.

“I was so thankful to be up front,” he said. “I still got hit a few times. I could hear our spotters saying, ‘They’re off in four, they’re off in seven. When you come back around in one, there’s going to be dirt on the road.’ I mean, there was stuff all over the place!”

He did however acknlowledge the reason he won was due to his lucky break, thanks to Ambrose’s mistake.

“I think Marcos had a very fast car in the short runs. I had a try or two at him before that, couldn’t get by him. So I’m not sure I would have gotten by him. It was definitely a gift kind of handed to us, as Chad said on the radio to me. From that point on, I just needed to get a good restart and get away from those guys.”

Robby Gordon meanwhile had mixed emotions – he was pleased to have finished so high in the order, but disappointed to just miss out on victory.

“It was obviously a good run for us,” he said. “We came here to win the race. But second place is pretty darn close to winning it. My team needs a little bit of morale here and there, and this will boost morale back at the workshop. I will say that we will come to Watkins Glen guns blazing. We’ll get a lot of confidence going into the Glen and spend a bunch of time getting more rear grip. At the end of the day, that’s what we struggled on with Jimmie”